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There’ll almost certainly be a press conference to announce Dion Phaneuf’s impending contract extension this week, but you probably don’t need to sit through it to get the gist of the Maple Leafs’ rationale.

Claude Loiselle, the Leafs’ assistant general manager, explained the thrust of the organization’s motive on the most recent episode of .HBO’s 24/7.

“Dion is our captain. He’s a cornerstone of the organization. He plays the most minutes on our team and plays against the best players on the other team,” Loiselle said. “It’s important to have him signed for a long time so we can continue the progression that we’re on.”

If Leafs Nation was fully prepared to buy into Loiselle’s line of logic, the lead-up to Wednesday’s Winter Classic would count as a moment for the blue and white’s loyalists to celebrate. Phaneuf’s signing, after all, means that a considerable core of the roster is signed for the foreseeable future. It means Phaneuf and top forward Phil Kessel will be on the books through the seasons that end in 2021 and 2022, respectively. A quartet of big-dollar forwards, among them David Clarkson, Joffrey Lupul, Tyler Bozak and James van Riemsdyk, are also inked through at least 2017-18.

“It should make all of us feel pretty good,” Lupul was saying on Sunday.

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It should. And yet the only thing that definitely appears to be on the rise in the centre of the hockey universe is doomsaying anxiety among the fan base.

Perhaps it’s because the Leafs came into Sunday’s 5-2 win over the Carolina Hurricanes with a minus-8.6 shot differential, and no team has ever made the playoffs in the post-1967 expansion era getting outshot so consistently. Perhaps it’s because they’re still prone to late-game cough-ups (they’ve surrendered six game-tying goals in the final five minutes of regulation this season, the most in the league). Perhaps it’s because that when they’ve faced elite teams, they’ve often been humiliated. “They’re playing hockey and we’re playing shinny,” was head coach Randy Carlyle’s 24/7 soundbite in the midst of one recent drubbing. “We suck!” was Carlyle’s synopsis in another.

If that’s the stuff of “progression” — if 20 wins in 41 games is “progress,” this when they had 23 at the same point last season and 21 the season before that — this is a franchise undergoing an awfully uncomfortable growth spurt.

Yes, the Leafs have been hit hard by injuries, although not measurably harder than the typical NHL team thanks to this pain-filled, compressed schedule. And given the sorry state of the Eastern Conference, it’s unlikely the Leafs are in danger of falling out of the playoff race anytime soon. So certainly it’s more than possible to spin the narrative positively.

On Sunday, for instance, the home team welcomed back top-line centre Bozak after he missed most of a month with an oblique injury. Bozak responded with three assists while linemate and best pal Kessel, who had slumped in Bozak’s absence, potted goals off two of them.

The feel-good storyline — not to mention a third-period performance by Clarkson that Carlyle called his best 20 minutes of the season — had the optimists casting their eyes toward the some-day return of centreman Dave Bolland, out going on nearly two months with a severed ankle tendon but now limping around in street shoes, and picturing a post-season run at full manpower.

“It seems like right now we’re starting to see the light at the end of the tunnel a little bit,” Lupul said. “We’re getting Bozie back now. Bolland, you see him walking around now and it looks like he’s going to be back, probably not in the near future, but he is going to be back. There’s a lot of positive things right now. Now it’s just a matter of getting things going in the second half.”

Still, even amid all that hope news of Phaneuf’s impending signing continued to set off an avalanche of negative reaction from Leafs Nation. On Twitter, in emails to scribes, in comments at the bottom of news stories — it’s difficult to remember a moment when the rabble voiced as much one-sided dissatisfaction with a transaction.

“I was born the year the Maple Leaf came into existence (1926-27) and have been a fan since then — this will be the biggest mistake they ever made,” wrote one commenter on the Star’s website.

Wrote another: “The cornerstone is made out of sand and as such is useless and not worth 7 million a year. I would pay Reilly or Gardiner 7 (million) a year before Pylon.”

Those are just a couple of printable (i.e. not profane) assessments, and certainly there exist supporters of Phaneuf. Still, plenty more samples of anti-captain vitriol could be found.

And certainly there is plenty of clear-eyed downside to the deal. In signing Phaneuf the Leafs are paying a little more than Zdeno Chara money for a sub-elite defenceman who’ll be 29 by playoff time, whose offensive production has been in decline, whose high-mileage usage doesn’t appear to be doing much for his foot speed. They’re paying a little less than Shea Weber money for a guy who’s nine seasons into his career and has never been out of the first round of the playoffs, who was essentially given away in his prime by the franchise that drafted him amid incessant chatter of his knack for dividing a dressing room. They’re paying as handsomely as some of the best teams have paid for their best defenceman — only Phaneuf is the best defenceman on a mediocre squad. He’s the key cog of a rickety machine. The Leafs have a .470 winning percentage in the nearly four years since Phaneuf arrived. He’s the cornerstone of a flood-prone shanty that could use some work on its foundation.

Alas, Leafs management is up against one of the truisms of salary-cap sports: If you don’t re-sign your own players, you’re often hard-pressed to replace them. The only choice, if you’re an executive of that belief, is between crossing one’s fingers and praying.

The best-case-scenario hope, of course, is that various developments will make Phaneuf and the rest of the core look better soon enough; that Morgan Rielly emerges as a home-grown bargain; that Peter Holland continues to produce as a trade-market steal; that trade bait like Jake Gardiner or Nazem Kadri could land a respectable fish; that Bolland returns from injury and re-signs for a reasonable number when he hits free agency this summer; that Jonathan Bernier’s goaltending can cover up enough the rest of the flaws through another money-drenched playoff run.

That, and a rising salary cap freeing up some cash for more shopping in coming summers, amounts to the hope. But this what we know: The Leafs have locked up a core that was largely at the wheel when this team drove itself off the cliff two seasons ago. They’ve locked up a core that was on the ice for an epic Game 7 disintegration last spring. They’ve locked up a core, but they need more.

“It’s basically the organization having faith in us and saying, ‘These are some of the core pieces,’ ” Lupul said Sunday. “Obviously they still have to add pieces around all of us. But that’s them showing faith in us that they think, with the right surrounding cast, we can get the job done.”

The job for Phaneuf is only to convince the game’s most engaged fan base that it made a mistake in not sharing management’s belief in his worth. As gigs go, it’s a doozy. At least it pays.

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